COLUMN RIGHT : Bush Bashers on Right Need to Think Again : Backing Buchanan may put a Democrat in White House.

In February, 1972, traveling in Beijing with President Nixon as a member of his staff, Pat Buchanan asked to lunch with me. He had an agenda. The conservatives centered around National Review who were backing Rep. John Ashbrook in the Republican primary against Richard Nixon could be expected to proceed in order to make their demonstration.

“The boss understands that. And I understand that. But it’s got to stop after New Hampshire. You’ll have made your point. And the only thing you would accomplish if you kept on, in the South and in California, is to weaken President Nixon’s chances against whatever Democrat gets nominated, and that’s serious stuff.”

The question Pat Buchanan asked in 1972, to which he was convinced he had the answer, is reasonably asked at this point. Having got 37% of the New Hampshire Republican vote, Buchanan has been the vehicle through which the substantial dissatisfaction over Bush’s irresolute domestic policies has been communicated. The latest emission of Bush’s jury-rigged economic policy came in his State of the Union message, with its 30-odd proposals for this and that for him, her and it.

The package was criticized on the left by Nobel Laureate Robert Solow because “it doesn’t speak to any clear vision of wanting to do anything systematic for the economy.” Chicago-based economist Robert Genetski found hope in the capital-gains proposal and the 90-day regulatory breather, but otherwise said of it that it was mere “excess baggage or outright economic garbage.”

Now American conservatives need to ask themselves a very serious question, to which there is a conventional answer and an unconventional answer. The conventional answer was the planted axiom in Pat Buchanan’s query in Beijing in 1972: Do you want to make it easier for a left Democrat to win the White House? Of course not. But if you persist in opposing Richard Nixon in the primaries, that exactly is the risk you are running.

One would not need to alter that formulation to throw back at Buchanan the analysis he came up with 20 years ago: Do American conservatives want to risk a Democratic alternative to George Bush?

We have heard a great deal in recent weeks and months of Bush’s delinquencies. It is time to recall his strengths. Beginning roughly with the Warren Court, probably the most significant legislation in America has been the handiwork of the courts, the Supreme Court in particular. Certainly this has been so with reference to social questions. Bush has been entirely orthodox in his nominations to the Supreme Court and to the lower courts. He has been enormously courageous in his resolute opposition to abortion. He has understood the need for a reduction in the capital-gains tax, though his most recent endorsement of it is encumbered by fine print that could make the tax reduction he proposes all but meaningless for many.

In foreign affairs the President’s diplomacy was outstanding in choreographing the Gulf War against aggression, though his failure to consummate his own victory was disappointing and could have disastrous consequences, and his validation of the dubious authority of the United Nations could hurt us in the years ahead.

Bush hasn’t shown the necessary energy in helping Russia et al . get on their feet. But he recognizes that the kind of isolationism that appeals to so many is a form of diplomatic Ludditism--a wistful call, however macho the language in which it is stated, for a past as definitively supplanted by the advent of A-B-C weaponry as the horse-drawn carriage was supplanted by the automobile. With missiles that carry atomic, bacteriological and chemical weapons available to almost any country that has the cash to buy them, there is no shelter, pending a 100% reliable SDI.

From all of which it follows that conservatives will not want to risk a Democratic victory.

The unconventional answer to the question raised by Pat Buchanan is this: Bush’s convictionless conservatism, reflected in his desultory rhetoric, argues the need to recharge conservative batteries by accepting a four-year Democratic hailstorm. Those who hold that the repristination of a conservative Republican Party can happen only if Bush is edged out of the White House will back Pat Buchanan--or, for that matter, David Duke--intending precisely to damage George Bush.

That line of thought is intellectually credible. But the stakes are very high. To write off Bush is the equivalent, just to begin with, of writing off one-third of the Congress--33 senators and 145 congressmen--representing his power to veto. That is just one of the heavy penalties of losing the White House.

Pat, are you free for lunch tomorrow?